Deep in the scene: David Barbe’s career and history with Nuçi’s Space
Among the performers at the Nuçi’s Space 25 year anniversary show was David Barbe, who has been in the Athens music scene for even longer, starting when he moved here in 1981 to attend the University of Georgia.
“I’d been playing in a band since I was about 12 years old, but once I got here and saw the indie rock thing, which was a little bitty thing at the time, but it just seemed real and doable,” Barbe said.
Involved with Nuçi’s Space since its creation 25 years ago, Barbe helped design the rehearsal spaces and marketed the space within the music scene. Barbe is still involved with helping out where needed, but stepped back from his role on the board of directors to juggle running his own recording studio and his role as director of the music business certificate program at UGA.
“We cover basically every aspect of the music business. There’s some things that everybody has to know, and everybody has to take an intro class, and then there are the two capstone classes that cover the major aspects of the music business. The students can pick the rest of their curriculum based on what they want their specialty to be,” Barbe said.
Barbe’s deep connections within the Athens community and national music scene have helped bring the program to life, allowing it to foster the next generation of musicians.
“When I came to the program 15 years ago, the biggest one of my initiatives right away was to better connect this program and the town’s music scene, all over the country and all over the world, because since I have had such a long career, and I’ve worked in so many different places, that’s been a big advantage,” Barbe said.
Barbe started the band Mercyland in 1985 before joining Sugar around 1992. With them, he toured around the world until 1995, when he left to start his own recording studio, Chase Park Transduction.
“I’ve worked with bands like Drive-By Truckers and Deer Hunter and I think I’ve worked on about 400 albums, and at Chase Park, I would bet 1,000 albums have been made between everybody that works here,” Barbe said.
Overall, during his time in the music industry, Barbe has observed Nuçi’s Space’s contributions to the Athens community.
“It’s had a tremendously positive impact. Everybody loves Nuçi’s Space. There’s a lot of people that are part of a local music scene that came through Nuçi’s Space as Camp Amped kids originally. My kids did Camp Amped, and it’s a very positive thing. Its mission with suicide prevention and mental health has helped Athens and the music scene here take a tremendous step forward in helping alleviate those kind of issues and removed a lot of stigma for people,” Barbe said.
